An Italian Holiday

by Maeve Haran

  ‘Come on, Ma, I think your duty’s clear.’

  ‘You’re going to suggest I go with her, aren’t you?’

  ‘No one would be better than you at averting disaster.’

  ‘Yes, but could I bear it?’

  ‘You might enjoy seeing what they’re up to. Beatrice left me a message that all is peace and harmony.’

  ‘Not for long, it won’t be.’

  ‘I’ll pay for you, Ma. Business class all the way.’

  Gwen laughed. ‘It’d almost be worth it to see Mariella’s face. I bet she’s travelling economy.’

  Stephen smiled his twinkliest smile. ‘You can take her to the VIP lounge. Really rub it in. Or maybe she’ll be refused by one of those haughty hostesses.’

  ‘I must admit,’ Gwen replied with holy glee, ‘you do paint a tempting picture.’

  ‘Think of the good you’d be doing.’

  ‘I don’t see you offering.’

  ‘Having me there would change everything. I’d be the host and they’d suddenly be guests. I like the idea they’re feeling really at home.’

  ‘You’re a generous man, Stephen.’

  ‘Thank you. I had a generous mother.’

  ‘Go on, get back to ruining London’s skyline.’

  Stephen said goodbye to his mother then stood for a moment looking out at the dramatic London scene before him. The lights were just beginning to come on all over the city, giving it a magic of its own, different from Lanzarella’s yet still powerfully alluring. He wondered how Angela was getting on and thought of calling Drew to find out. He thought again how he’d watched her progress, as well as her TV programmes, but had never had the nerve to approach her directly.

  Come on, Stephen, admit it. It was because you felt guilty. He knew that, all those years ago, she must have felt abandoned by him while he enjoyed the heady thrills of being part of the smart set at university. He had become quite the party animal for a while.

  What an irony, given that he now lived alone. Like Angela, without even a dog. Life had a way of turning out quite differently from the way you expected it to.

  Monica drank her delicious Italian fizz and glanced across at Angela, sitting on the terrace looking out to sea, her face lit by the pink luminescence of the setting sun. But it was the inner radiance that was most obvious. Of all of them, Angela was the one on whom the siren call of this place had had the greatest impact. But it was the mythical sirens who had lured men to their deaths and she suspected it was Angela who was in the greatest danger, not of death but of heartbreak.

  For the first time Monica faintly regretted coming to this glorious, beautiful, healing place. She, too, felt a different person but she was also the repository of too many secrets: Claire’s love for Luca and Tony’s suspicions about Hugo, not to mention what Luigi and Giovanni and the others were up to.

  Was there something strange and dangerous in this villa of the sirens? Would too many people she’d come to care for end up crashing on the rocks beneath?

  She felt the need for Constantine, with his reassuring pragmatic cynicism, to get her feet back onto the ground and headed through the stand of holm oaks towards his house.

  Despite the increasing heat, Constantine’s clothes were unchanged. He still wore his trench coat and Russian hat but at least Spaghetti no longer peeped out of his pocket. Monica knew this because the little dog was snapping furiously at her legs.

  ‘She’s a fine little guard dog.’ Constantine winked. ‘I’ve taught her to go for journalists. Art critics especially; for those she gets a treat.’ He led Monica through the studio, in which her own life-size nude portrait had pride of place.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell!’ She hid her eyes. ‘Can’t you put it somewhere a bit more discreet?’

  He shook his head then rooted about for two bottles of, improbably, Fuller’s London Pride.

  ‘I import it specially. A true taste of London. Can’t abide this bloody piss they call lager. Come on, try one.’

  He looked the painting over. ‘Anyway, I’m proud of it. As a matter of fact, I’m planning a little show.’

  ‘Not with that in it, you’re not.’

  ‘My dear, don’t be so prudish. Think of Picasso and Françoise Gilot, or Lizzie Siddal and the Pre-Raphaelites. What would Manet have done if Olympia had refused to let him show the painting that stunned the world just because she didn’t have any clothes on?’

  Monica tasted her beer and decided she didn’t like it. ‘Yes, but look at Sargent’s Madame X. It ruined her life just because in the painting one of her straps had fallen down and everyone thought she was a whore.’

  ‘No one is going to think you are a whore,’ Constantine reassured her.

  ‘I think I’m rather insulted by that,’ Monica teased.

  ‘And at least you don’t look like a librarian.’ He smiled wickedly.

  ‘Touché.’

  Now, we must go out on the terrace. It’s time to feed my Venus flytrap.’

  He led them out into the blinding sun of his amazing eyrie hanging right out over the sea. An unsettling green plant sat in the middle of a white table which opened its yawning red mouth and snapped shut its vicious-looking red spikes when Constantine fed it with flies.

  ‘That is truly disgusting,’ Monica complained.

  ‘It’s a metaphor for modern life. The Venus flytrap is the greedy capitalist and the flies are ordinary people like you and me. I am about to paint it for my next show.’

  ‘Constantine, there is no one on the planet who would ever describe you as ordinary.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Constantine bowed with sudden dignity like an ambassador at the UN. ‘Now to what pleasure do I owe this visit?’

  ‘I wanted to ask what you make of something.’

  ‘Fire away. Now we’ve fed my little carnivore Guido will bring us something to eat.’

  As soon as they’d sat down, Guido appeared, smiling happily, and spread a feast of salt and pepper squid, tomato and olive oil bruschetta, a green salad and home-made bread in front of them.

  ‘And a glass of local wine for the lady,’ announced Guido gleefully. ‘I cannot believe she wants to drink that nasty beer.’

  Monica took it gratefully.

  ‘You’re becoming positively Italian, my dear.’

  Like a dark cloud, the idea of home and the reality of no job and very little money swooped down on Monica. ‘It’s not surprising, considering the alternative.’

  ‘Surely it can’t be that grim in Great Missenden.’

  ‘You haven’t met my mother. Or her boxers.’

  ‘But why do you have to live with your mother? You are far too old, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘Something went wrong with our pensions. I’m not quite sure what, but it means I have what the state gives us and a tiny bit more, but I can’t even claim it yet.’ Monica went quiet. The idea was too depressing to contemplate.

  ‘And you’re thinking how can this one old man live in this house, which costs twenty million euros.’

  ‘My God, does it?’ She looked round reverently. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘And think what your little property next door must be valued at.’

  ‘Well, that’s kind of what I came about. And, of course, for the delight of your company.’

  ‘You don’t have to waste your time on flattery. I’ve never cared what people think of me.’

  ‘Even the ones who like you,’ Monica dared.

  ‘Well, maybe them a bit more. Now what’s all this about?’

  ‘I caught Hugo Robertson photographing The Annunciation and then one of the statues in the garden. Claire’s always said she thought it had to be by an amazing sculptor.’

  ‘We’ll have to sneak up and have a look at nightfall. I had heard there were some important pieces up at the villa.’

  ‘I do have some photographs on my phone, as a matter of fact.’

  She produced the snap of Angela, Hugo and the nymph. ‘It doesn’t do her justice
, of course. The workmanship is extraordinary. You could swear the statue’s living and breathing.’

  ‘My God!’ Constantine’s usual deadbeat style deserted him. ‘That is something. I think it could be a Bernini! With his statues, you feel as if he’s caught a fleeting moment. See how the statue is kneeling, staring into the depths of the pond as if she’s just glimpsed something. Look at the intensity on her face! She knows in just a flash it will be gone.’

  Monica caught his excitement. ‘Do you think it could be quite valuable?’

  ‘If it really is a Bernini, then yes, it could be worth a great deal. We need some expert advice.’

  ‘But surely Stephen would know?’

  ‘You’d think so, but Stephen Charlesworth is a curious owner. Guido tells me they picked up the statue in some little antiques place because his wife liked it. The gardener moans that it’s difficult to keep clean.’

  ‘And The Annunciation,’ Monica persisted, ‘I have this feeling that it’s very special, not some run-of-the-mill fresco knocked up by some local artist.’

  ‘All the more reason for Mr Robertson to want to get his hands on the villa.’

  ‘The trouble is, Angela thinks it’s her he wants to get his hands on.’

  ‘That makes things tricky, I can see that, and if you open her eyes, she’ll never forgive you. Well, we’d better watch him carefully, hadn’t we?’

  When she got back to the villa, Monica stopped for a moment to listen.

  Someone was playing a guitar and singing ‘Lay Lady Lay’. She stood entranced, all the years peeling back to when she was a lonely student of nineteen lying across her narrow college bed listening to the line about the man whose hands were dirty but his heart was clean and that she was the best thing that he’d ever seen, and yearning for someone to feel that way about her. When somebody did, he hadn’t been at all a romantic figure; he’d been small, slightly plump, with glasses and a delightfully endearing smile, and a quite surprising talent in bed.

  Of course, today’s singer wasn’t Brian but Martin, and as she approached she could see that the passion and delight he took in the music, and especially how well he played and sang, were both surprising and rather moving.

  She didn’t want to disturb him and make him suddenly self-conscious, so she went round the side of the house towards her room, hoping she’d be able to hear some more through her open window. In the hall Beatrice jumped on her, all smiles.

  ‘The nephew of Signora Rosa in the shop in Lerini, he come with this guitar for you and Mr Martin, he borrow it.’ Beatrice handed over a note from the antiques lady saying they were welcome to try it out and if they liked it, they could discuss a price later.

  Claire, she noted, was reading in the salon, with the door to the terrace firmly closed. How very small-minded of her.

  She jumped up when she saw Monica. ‘Really, Monica, I think this is most peculiar and quite unnecessary of you to get Martin a guitar – at least, we assume it’s for Martin since none of the rest of us play.’

  ‘The lady in the antiques shop tracked it down through her nephew. I had no idea she’d be as efficient as this. And don’t worry, it’s only on approval.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s still rather weird of you, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  But Monica found she did rather mind.

  ‘Oh come on, Claire,’ Sylvie had wafted in and was clearly as enchanted as Monica, ‘anyone’d think you were jealous but for the fact that you’ve been so caught up with this Luca.’

  ‘Oh shut up, the pair of you!’ Claire closed her book and disappeared upstairs.

  ‘We ought to be more sympathetic really,’ the kind Monica was reasserting itself.

  ‘Nonsense. You’ve been extremely generous looking after her husband for her when he was de trop, so she could go off playing Oranges and Lemons. Now it’s all getting a bit sticky she’d be better off being nice to us instead of slamming off like a flouncy teenager.’

  By supper time, Claire seemed to have worked this out for herself, and was being her old self again. ‘Sorry for being a cow, everyone,’ she murmured so Martin could hear.

  That evening after dinner they all drifted onto the terrace, the sky above like dark blue velvet studded with flirtatiously twinkling stars, a kind of peace descending despite all the swirling tensions, and listened to Martin sitting in the shadows half hidden by a wall of fragrant wisteria.

  ‘It’s amazing how playing a guitar changes your image,’ whispered Sylvie. ‘Martin actually looks quite sexy.’

  ‘Do you still want to come to Vesuvius?’ Monica asked Martin as she helped herself to coffee and croissants next morning. ‘I mean, now that Claire won’t be disappearing off to Lerini all the time?’

  ‘Hang around waiting to see if my wife starts to want me here, you mean?’ he asked bitterly. Then laughed. ‘And the answer is yes, I would very much like to come to Mount Vesuvius. It’s firmly on my bucket list.’

  ‘We won’t need to leave till late afternoon, so I thought I’d have a swim.’

  ‘Isn’t it quite a big expedition? Why leave so late?’

  ‘Hard though this is going to be for you, Martin, I am in charge today.’

  ‘OK boss.’ He grinned.

  Angela had plans to go on a day trip to Ischia, so that left Claire and Sylvie.

  ‘Why don’t I come to Vesuvius as well?’ Claire suggested.

  There was an ominous pause. ‘The thing is, Claire, it’s a bit private.’ Monica didn’t want to tell them all she was going to scatter her husband’s ashes yet she could see this must sound distinctly odd.

  ‘But it’s OK for Bob Dylan here to come along?’

  ‘We made the arrangement when you were too busy to see me, you may recall,’ Martin reminded Claire, which didn’t seem to do a thing for her mood.

  ‘So I have to kick my heels on my own all day?’

  ‘Come for a swim this morning. And maybe later you could try out some more amazing lemon recipes with Immaculata,’ Monica suggested.

  ‘Are you trying to be funny, Monica?’

  In the end, Sylvie dragged Claire off to look around the shops in Lerini.

  Monica couldn’t believe how nervous she felt. Everything needed to be done just right today. She’d even gone as far as ordering a taxi to take them there.

  By the time it arrived at the back steps, Monica was feeling exceptionally anxious.

  ‘A taxi all the way to Vesuvius?’ Martin whistled. ‘Isn’t that ridiculously expensive?’

  ‘Yes, but I thought the occasion deserved no less. Besides it’s cheaper than hiring a car and bumping into an Italian on a motorbike.’

  ‘So are most things,’ Martin agreed.

  ‘I still can’t work out why we’re going so late.’ Martin, ever the organizer, could only see it as wasting half the day. ‘What about lunch? Is there a cafe at Vesuvius?’

  ‘Immaculata’s made us a packed lunch.’ Monica indicated the large carrier bag. ‘I think she mistook us for a Roman legion. Ham, cheese, olives, pizza slices, caprese salad, a bottle of red wine and some water.’

  ‘That should do us. Where do you want to eat it?’

  ‘Hands off. Didn’t I tell you I was in charge? I’ll tell you when.’

  ‘Forget librarian. You’d have made an excellent headmistress.’

  ‘Thank you, Martin.’

  The taxi caused great excitement in the kitchen as it was driven by Cesare, yet another second cousin of Beatrice’s, so quite a large party assembled to wave them goodbye.

  It took an hour to get to the lower slopes of Mount Vesuvius, still verdant even in the hot spring, with its bald crater on top like the tonsure on a green-haired monk.

  Cesare dropped them in the car park nearest the crater. ‘Crater very dangerous,’ he informed them. ‘Stay away from edge.’ He agreed to return for them in three hours’ time.

  ‘What on earth are we going to do here for three hours?’ Martin asked.

  ‘You’ll
see. First, we’re going to have a late lunch or an early supper.’

  She led them away from all the other tourists, back down the slopes in the opposite direction from the crater.

  ‘Monica,’ Martin enquired. ‘Aren’t we going the wrong way?’

  ‘Will you shut up and just follow me?’

  ‘As long as you promise me this isn’t going to involve me ending up in the crater as some pagan sacrifice?’

  ‘Yes, Martin, I can promise you that.’

  They walked down a surprisingly wooded trail following a narrow and quite muddy path, pushing brambles and overhanging branches out of their way.

  ‘Bad things happen in the dark forest,’ Martin reminded her with a grin.

  ‘Martin,’ was Monica’s brisk reply. ‘Shut up and enjoy it.’

  They kept up their ramble in silence until they came to an opening up ahead. Monica stood back to let Martin pass beneath the branches into the clearing.

  ‘Sir, your table.’ Monica indicated a grassy knoll.

  They began to spread the food out on the cloth Beatrice had provided. As well as the rest of the food, there was crispy bread, and amazing ripe peaches.

  They opened the wine and sat listening to the birdsong, savouring a moment of extraordinary peace.

  ‘OK,’ Martin said as they packed up, in a tone that in anyone else Monica would have taken as flirtatious, ‘I’m in your hands. So, headmistress, what are we doing next?’

  Monica laughed and, to Martin’s amazement, led them, not back to the crater, but down another path. ‘This is beginning to feel like a fairy tale. Will I find a princess who needs to be freed in the middle of the forest?’

  ‘Not exactly a princess, more a prince,’ Monica answered mysteriously.

  They trudged on for another twenty minutes until they came out onto a plateau where, highly improbably, there was a row of what looked like wooden stables.

  A man with longish hair, deeply tanned and wearing blue jeans and a faded waistcoat, walked towards them. ‘Hi, I’m Nick. I gather you’ve booked a rather special ride today.’

  ‘As far up as we can go,’ Monica replied.

  He nodded. ‘You’ll have to walk the last part, I’m afraid. It’s only twenty minutes and you’ll be grateful to know, there is a path.’